SNAKE CHARMER

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SNAKE CHARMER: Jean-Leon Gerome

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Jean-Leon Gerome Oil Painting - SNAKE CHARMER

Keywords: SNAKE, CHARMER

Work Overview: SNAKE CHARMER
JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME
c. 1879
Oil on canvas
32 3/8 x 47 5/8 in. (82.2 x 121 cm)

The Snake Charmer is an oil-on-canvas Orientalist painting by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme produced around 1879.[1] It is signed "J.L Gerome 1880".

The painting depicts a naked boy standing on a small carpet in the centre of a room with blue tiled walls, facing away from the viewer, holding a python which coils around his waist and over his shoulder, while an older man sits to his right playing a fipple flute. The performance is watched by a motley group of armed men from a variety of Islamic tribes, with different clothes and weapons.

The work measures 33 × 48 inches (84 × 122 cm). It is a highly finished academic painting, with a synthesis of Egyptian, Turkish, and Indian elements creating a voyeuristic fantasy for Western audiences. Adult snake charmers didn't perform naked since Islam prohibits that, but children did, in order to create more suspense in the spectator: seeing a poisonous snake held by an unprotected, stark naked boy was more thrilling than seeing it held by a strong, clothed man. Also, child nudity was highly accepted.

Gérôme made the painting on a visit to Constantinople in 1875, and his observations informed details of the painting. The inscriptions on the walls cannot easily be read, but parts are in Arabic Calligraphy. Despite apparent errors in writing, one section in the larger text on top can be identified as a verse from the Koran (2:256) condemning coercion towards Islamic monotheism. The other inscriptions are a dedication to a sultan. The blue tiles are inspired by İznik panels in the Altinyol and Baghdad Kiosk of Topkapi palace.

The painting was used as the front cover of Edward Said's book Orientalism, in which he draws attention to the undercurrent of sensuality dressed up as academic interest. An article by Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient", in Art in America, (May 1983), pp. 118–131, pp. 187–191, points out that the seemingly photorealistic quality of the painting allows Gérôme to present an unrealistic scene as if it were a true representation of the east. Nochlin considers it better a representation of the West's colonial ideology.

The highly finished style of the painting has also been evaluated within the context of Gerome's resolute opposition to French Impressionism.

A naked boy, accompanied by an elderly musician playing the flute, “charms” a snake. Although Gérôme could have witnessed such a performance during his travels in Egypt, this detailed—almost photographic—image is an invention. A room in Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace inspired the tiled wall, inscribed with Koranic verses, while the stone floor resembles one in a Cairo mosque. The spectators represent a range of ethnicities, wearing a mishmash of clothing and weapons. Paintings of non-Western subjects, often with exotic or erotic undertones, were popular in nineteenth-century Europe and ensured Gérôme’s success.

1880: In his studio in Paris, Jean-Léon Gérôme paints this image of a naked figure, presumably a boy, uncoiling his snake before a small crowd in a palatial setting. Scholars today say he fabricated the scene from multiple sources, including a photograph of tile work in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

Later that year, Adolphe Goupil, his dealer/publisher and also his father-in-law, sells the painting for 75,000 francs to New York collector Albert Spencer.

1888: Spencer sells the work for $19,500 to Alfred Corning Clark, an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune.

1893: Alfred Corning Clark loans out "The Snake Charmer" so it can be shown at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago.

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Jean-Leon Gerome

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